White Rose Research Online URL for this paper:
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/84719/
Version: Accepted Version
Article:
Steward, H (2013) Responses. Inquiry: an interdisciplinary journal of philosophy, 56 (6).
681 - 706. ISSN 0020-174X
https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2013.841055
[email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/
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Reply to Alec Hinshelwood
Alec’s response focuses on what he calls the Separation Thesis: the claim that the
movements one’s body makes when one acts are the causal results of one’s actions. Alec is
right to suggest that I am committed to the thesis in A Metaphysics, and right also that the
argument he offers in his §1 accurately delineates the reasoning which I take to support the
claim. Alec offers two arguments against the thesis – as well as a diagnosis of the mistake
made by the argument for it which is outlined in §1. I am fairly sure that neither of Alec’s
arguments against the Separation Thesis successfully defeats it; but having said that, I want
to concede that I am attracted to what Alec says about a possible vulnerability in the
argument for the claim. Though I shall defend the Separation thesis against Alec’s two
arguments, then, I want to do so in the context of a concession to one of Alec’s positive
proposals – for I believe he may indeed have suggested a way of representing the causality
that is involved in bodily agency that is potentially preferable to a model which
conceptualises everything in terms of the occurrence of causally related events.
Alec’s first argument begins from the premise that it is natural to think that at least a large
number of bodily actions are straightforwardly perceivable by means of vision. As Alec notes,
this is a premise I accept; indeed, it is one for which I have explicitly argued, making it the
premise of a further argument against the view that actions, in general, are things which are
internal to the body. Alec’s thought is that there might be a problem in understanding how
one may perceive the raising of an arm unless it is identical with the event of the arm’s rising:
“if we were told that the obviously visible occurrence of her arm’s going up is not her action
but something distinct in which her action results, then we might be unsure whether we really
can literally see it” (p.?) But as Alec, in effect, concedes straight away, this line of thought is
going to seem unpersuasive to anyone who is comfortable in general with the kind of
metaphysical pluralism that might, for example, lead one to agree that a statue can be
distinct from a lump of clay, despite being spatiotemporally exactly coincident with it. Once
we understand the view of reality which motivates such metaphysical pluralism, we will, I
The metaphysical pluralist will readily accept that there simply is nowhere else to look except
in the same place as one looks in order to see the movement – just as, in the case of statue
and lump, one looks in the same place to see both things.
Alec says that in the case of statue and lump we have the intimate relation of constitution to
appeal to in order to understand the claim that two entities are co-present: “the fact that the
lump and the statue are perceptually indistinguishable despite being distinct surely stems
from the intimate relation in which the lump stands to statue: the relation of constitution”
(p.?). In view of this idea about how we are to ground our understanding of the perceptual
indistinguishability of things which are nevertheless distinct, he wonders whether views I
have attempted to develop elsewhere concerning the relationships between processes and
events might be put to work in order to argue that actions are in effect constituted by
movements in the same sort of way as statues are constituted by lumps. In fact, though, I
don’t think this is the verdict that the framework I have attempted to develop delivers. That
framework is based on utterly general ideas about aspect. As I conceive of things, there are
both raisings that are processes and raisings that are events; and also risings that are
processes and risings that are events (since both verbs admit of the aspectual modifications
which ground the event-process distinction). If talk of constitution of one individual by
another is appropriate here at all, then, raising processes will be constituted out of raising
events – not out of rising events, as Alec’s proposal has it. The process-event distinction, as
I understand it, is simply orthogonal to the distinction between actions and (mere)
movements.
Given that that is so, what are we to say in answer to Alec’s worry that unless we can appeal
to constitution or a similarly ‘intimate’ relation, we are left with no resources by means of
which to understand the claim of non-identity between action and movement? I think my
inclination is to say that it is a mistake to think that it is really the relation of constitution which
helps us understand the claim of non-identity in the statue-lump case. What helps us
understand the claim of non-identity, it seems to me, is a philosophy of individuation– an
understanding of the role played by the sortal concept in carving up the world of thinkable
objects. A sortal concept picks out a substantial individual not merely by drawing a spatial, or
around it – it tells us which object of thought to have under consideration, not merely which
area of the spatiotemporal world is in question. And it is this which really does the work in
helping with understanding the non-identity claim. Things can happen to the lump which
cannot happen to the statue – and this is ultimately what underwrites its distinctness.
Leibniz’s Law is the ultimate criterion for individuation – different properties imply different
entities. ‘Constitution’ is secondary – it is a word by means of which we can talk about the
relationship between the individuals that are singled out by two important kinds of sortal
concept that tend to deliver coincident individuals – substance concepts and – let us call
them –portion concepts –like ‘lump’ or ‘piece’ or ‘chunk’. But we should not assume that
constitution is the central – and certainly we should not assume that it is the only – case of
non-identity with spatiotemporal coincidence.
If we let go of the thought that the relation of constitution itself is explanatory, and turn
instead to the thought that it is rather a certain philosophy of individuation which helps us see
why we need to distinguish things which might nevertheless be in the same place at the
same time, then it might be clearer how to argue for the distinctness of raising and rising.
Once again, it is Leibniz’s Law which is key. Most obviously, the raising is by me - it is a
doing – the rising is not. The raising can be e.g., eager (suppose I raise my arm to answer a
quiz question) – but an arm cannot rise eagerly. A verdict of distinctness is, in my view,
dictated by such simple facts as these – and in the face of such facts, the assumptions on
which the argument for perceptual distinguishability is based must be rejected.
. What of the second argument? Alec claims that given the Separation Thesis, it is hard to
see how the agent could know without observation or inference that her raising of her arm
falls under that description – since it does so, on the Separation thesis, only in virtue of the
raising’s having caused a distinct event – a rising – and the fact that the rising has occurred
would seem to be the sort of thing that could only be known by means of observation or
inference. But the issue here seems to me quite independent of the Separation thesis. That
someone is raising their arm implies, surely, that their arm is rising, whatever one thinks
about the Separation thesis – and this propositional relationship is quite sufficient all by itself
to give rise to the worry about how agents’ knowledge is possible, without any help from the
one’s arm if that implies that one’s arm is rising? – and if one needs observation to know that
one’s arm is rising? I am unsure what to think about what the correct solution to this problem
might be – but it seems to me that the problem has nothing particular to do with the
Separation Thesis – it is a problem for everyone who believes that agents’ knowledge is of a
privileged sort and who admits the validity of the inference. Doubtless, as Alec surmises, the
correct solution will involve a proper appreciation of how proprioception, as well as intention,
figures in our knowledge of what we are doing. But the Separation Thesis is not the source
of the problem.
Having said all this in defence of the Separation Thesis, I want to finish by conceding that I
think what Alec says at the end of his paper about the vulnerability of premise (3) in the
argument for the separation thesis is worth serious consideration. It may perhaps not follow
from the fact that in raising my arm I cause my arm to move that I cause an event of my
arm’s moving – and if it did not follow, then we might have cause to question whether the
Separation Thesis is true. I think we would need to hear more about how, when an arm is
caused to move by an agent, it could fail to be the case that the agent had caused an event
of an arm’s moving – but perhaps there is something to be said here. Perhaps causing
things to change is not always the same thing as causing changes. Or perhaps it is rather
that changes are not always best conceived of as individual events. I am open to, and
interested in, these suggestions – but I think they need further development before we could
decide definitively to embrace them, and perhaps consequently to abandon the Separation
